


Grave Business

by Shampain



Category: Luther (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 12:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At four in the morning, John Watson discovers he has a visitor. Her name is Alice, and she's in the mood to meddle. Post Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grave Business

They all kept coming to Baker Street. Most of the time, Mrs. Hudson turned them away, but sometimes she was busy downstairs in the shop making custard tarts or sandwiches or whatever it was she made to feed the masses that teemed by out on the sidewalk. Often if John just sat there and waited, whoever it was would eventually stop ringing the bell, and would go away. Sometimes they wouldn’t, and John would have to go down and tell them off, often angrily.

She received none of these things, because she went a different route. In fact, she was waiting for him in the sitting room, with a pot of tea. How she managed to put the kettle on without alerting him was a mystery, because it was four in the morning, and his sleeping was light.

Her clothes were dark and looked soft, as did her hair, and her wide mouth. But her eyes were different things entirely, cold and distant and sharp, as if they housed galaxies. Immediately he wanted to chuck her out.

“Careful now, Dr. Watson,” she said, in a smooth voice, pouring out two cups of tea.  “Don’t want to wake up the landlady, do we?”

She couldn’t be a reporter. He’d learnt over the past year that reporters were gutsy creatures, nosy and disrespectful and self-centred, and while they would lay in wait outside your door for hours, send you fruit baskets, even attempt to jump in your cab, they certainly didn’t break into your flat and set up camp in the sitting room in the small hours of the morning.

“Were you just going to wait until I got up?” he asked, dryly. He could feel a twitch start in his forehead, because she was sitting in Sherlock’s chair. He sat down across from her and watched as she added milk and sugar to her cup, but did not reach for his own. “It could have waited until morning.”

“I noticed your light coming on around this hour,” she replied, idly, as if spying was a completely normal activity for completely normal people, picking up her cup and taking a dainty sip. “I thought, perhaps, you might like the company.”

“I might like you to get the Hell out.”

“I thought of that, too. But I also thought your curiosity might get the better of you.” She sat back, crossing her ankles, hands settling in her lap, fingers curled together in an intricate knot. “I have a case for you, Dr. Watson.”

John felt it, then, puncturing a fresh note of clarity in his otherwise muddled, sleepless state. Anger, and regret. All of those people still filing to Baker Street, wanting their mysteries solved. The ones that still believed in Sherlock, the very few, thinking perhaps his genius had rubbed off on his amiable companion. She was just another idiot. While John appreciated there were those out there that believed him they all ended up being crazed wingnuts who also thought the Pope was an extraterrestrial.

“I’m guessing if you’re here you’ve read my blog,” John said, shortly. Maybe this woman was not only mad, but of the homicidal variety, as well. He wondered if he ought to be fearing for his safety right about now – well, not that he was concerned. He was a trained soldier, and besides, life had turned incredibly boring now with the absence of crime-filled pastimes. “And if you’ve read my blog, you know that I’m not a detective.”

The woman smiled around her teacup. Her eyes glinted, unforgiving and harsh, stars in the sky. “I’m not asking you for help. I’m offering to let you help me.”

“There isn’t a difference.”

“Sure there is,” she said. “When the subject matter appeals more to you than it does to me. I can keep going on with this mystery unsolved, because there are many mysteries out there in the world for me. But I like to help people, sometimes, if I like them. I have read your blog. I think I might like you.” She unclasped her hands, held them up and spread them, as if to say ‘crazy, isn’t it?’.

Maybe she was a reporter after all.

“You can leave, now,” John said. But she didn’t move, as he suspected. Instead she reached into her bag, a simple leather contraption with a clasp at the top, and pulled out a handful of folded papers.

“I’ve been abroad,” she said. “But when I returned, how shocked I was to see that my dear, dear cousin Jim had taken his own life. He was in the pit of despair, apparently, threatened by a madman who forced him to pretend to be something else. And how irritated I was to find him buried under the wrong tombstone.”

She held the papers out to him, but he didn’t take them. Instead his mind was moving, ticking, devouring all that she had just said. And his hand reflexively twitched, wanting to reach for a gun that wasn’t there.

“Really,” he said. He was mentally calculating how many strides it would take to reach the nearest kitchen knife.

“Do calm down, doctor,” she said, still as mild as ever, though he knew he looked nothing but composed. “My cousin and I do share traits, but I’m not like him and, by that same token, never really liked him, either. I’ve always had a feeling he might come and try to kill me, and I’ve had plans to deal with that eventuality. But your friend has made certain I won’t have to trouble myself. So I suppose I owe the both of you some goodwill.”

She said ‘friend’ in the same irritating manner everyone else did, quietly probing for some sort of outburst on his part. John barely noticed it anymore. He didn’t trust her, but he took the papers from her, unfolded them, and looked. It was a rental agreement from a storage facility, under the name James Morgan.

“I suppose you’re a Moriarty, too?”

“Goodness, no. We weren’t _that_ close. Alice Morgan,” she said, holding her hand out to him. When he took it, it was still warm from her teacup.

“That name sounds familiar.”

“I bet it does.” She smiled. “Well, what do you say? Would you like to go on an adventure with me, Dr Watson?”

God, he really was bored these days.


End file.
